Do you tell your kids to read when they are finished with their work? You know what I am talking about..... that 5-10 minute block of time when other kids are trying to get finished with their work. Well, I just heard a new coined phrase for reading during that time period.

It's called "Babysat by the Book!"...........

Okay, before you think I am crazy, I did not come up with the term, nor did I say I agree with it. Actually, I often times tell my kids to read when they are finished. But, I guess it did make me start to think. Maybe I should come up with a few other things for them to do. The hard part about having kids do something other than read is that:

1) It needs to be a pretty quiet activity.

2) It doesn't need to be worksheet after worksheet.

3) It has to be something they don't need a lot of help with.

Anyway, I decided to put something together. It may look simple, but it actually took me a lot of time to come up with the activities and get it typed up. The activities had to meet all three of the requirements above. My plan is to have my kids keep a composition notebook available for the activities they do when they are finished with their daily work. We will call it something like, "What should I cook up now that I'm done?" They will glue the below sheet into their notebook. Just fold it in half and glue down one side, and it will fit perfectly. They unfold it to read it, but it stays glued in. They can pick the activity they want to do. You can create your own rules, such as they have to do them all before they repeat one, or whatever you want. Also, they have to finish one before they start another, etc.

Also, notice that I tried to word everything around activites that could be reused throughout the year. Such as the topics of study in the classroom change, but the activities on the sheet don't change.

Here goes if you would like to use it. Please come back and let me know how it goes.

Also, I am going to rack my brain to come up with some more activities for grades 3-5, so if you comment with activities, I can put together a second version. Also, remember that this doesn't have to be ALL the time. They can still read at times. This is just another option.

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I am not sure why I started drawing pictures with my computer mouse, but I did. The end result is this cute (well, sort of cute...) little pot of gold with a rainbow and clover. And of course, I had to make something with it, so it became a St. Patrick's Day bookmark. I hope you can use it in your classroom. It's a freebie, so just click the link below.

We don't really talk too much about money in fourth grade other than when we connect it to our lessons on decimals or when adding and subtracting larger number using a dollar sign and decimal point. With that said, I have sort of been on a decimal point kick, so when I sawthese cute litle money graphics I decided to buy them and put together a counting money game. Get all of the details at my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Remember, just copy, cut, laminate, and put the game in a file folder. I have done the hours of work. So easy for you!

Greet your students at the door on St. Patrick's Day with a special treat. Or, have a treat waiting for them at their desk along with a themed St. Patrick's Day word search. Visit my page link above with FREE themed word searches. Fill a snack sized plastic zip-lock baggie with Lucky Charm's cereal, and then use this cute baggie topper I put together as a FREEBIE. Just fill the baggie like normal and staple the topper on the baggie.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have added many decimal games to my TpT store. Check them out using the links below.

I will be the first to say that I have a few students that are struggling to learn decimals. This tends to happen every year. Actually it happens with just about every math skill, right?

I used several of these games in my class this past week for guided math while I worked with small groups. The kids that had mastered decimals got to play games, which allowed me to reteach decimals to those that were just not getting it.﻿ Games are perfect for that, as well as for review before a test.

Next week my students will rotate around in math centers to review decimals before they test. In order to do this, I have made several games, which I sell in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. All of the games deal with different decimal skills. For example, one is a game of adding decimals, there is a game of comparing decimals, identifying decimals when looking at a picture, and then converting a decimal to a fraction. Try some of these out in your classroom. Your students are sure to love them. Remember, once you make a game and laminate it, it will last for years!

Yikes! The preamble to the Constitution uses some rather formal words. How about posterity! Hmmm...a fourth grader might have trouble figuring that one out on their own.

In our lessons on the Constitution, I broke down the preamble and used synonyms to help the kids better understand the meaning of this very important iintroduction to the Constitution. One activity I did with the students was that I wrote parts of the preamble onto large pieces of white paper. I broke it down in enough parts to give each group of two students a separate part. On each piece of paper, we worked together to come up with words to replace the more formal words of the preamble, which I then wrote in red ink. For example, as you can see in the picture below, we used fairness for justice and freedom for liberty. When they were all completed, I hung them in the hall outside my classroom. This created our illustrated version of the preamble. The kids had a lot of fun!

Here are a few other resources for you that can be found for FREE on the internet.

Learning decimals can be alot of fun, especially if you associate it with money. All kids like money, right? I always try to make the connection with what they already know, which would be the dollar sign and decimal point. Many kids can tell you that it takes 100 pennies to equal a dollar and ten dimes to equal a dollar, so play off of that when teaching the tenth's and hundredth's places.

I have put together some money themed decimal activites to use when I introduce decimals to the class. The first is a decimal slide show. It is really just an adobe file, but I use it like slide show. If you have a projector in your room, this is great to use to show the relationship between money and deimals. Feel free to use it to suit your purposes in the classroom.

The second activity is a decimal game. This works perfectly as a file folder game. These cash register themed cards can be used for a variety of different activities related to decimals, but one fun game is to use them in a game similar to War (the popular card game). Each cash register has a different decimal.

Get all the details on these activities from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. To go to these specific decimal activities, click on the links above each picture below.